Episode 245 is on the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth. Two half sisters who were born to be enemies, and are remembered as enemies, but were they always? Let’s discuss.
Hello, friend, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network and the original Tudor History Podcast, telling stories of Tudor England since 2009. I am your host, Heather, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
So in this episode, we are going to talk about the relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary I. Two sisters who were born in enmity, I suppose, because of their mothers. hating each other, and are often portrayed as being very much at odds. And they were very much at odds, but there was also a deep love there between them, which doesn’t often get portrayed or shown much.
So we’re going to talk about that. First, your regular reminder that TutorCon is coming up in just about two months, which is amazing. So I’m going to be starting to talk more about that. Um, sharing more about speakers and special offers for streaming tickets because of course we are sold out for the in person tickets, uh, but you can still come through the magic of the internet thanks to the streaming ticket, which is going to be so much fun.
It’s not just being in a zoom room watching. We have extra events just for streamers. There’s a whole community. where you can interact with other people, make new friends, um, really be part of this community of people who are obsessed with Tudor history just as much as you are. Plus you get to see everything live.
If you can’t make it live, everything’s recorded. So it’s going to be a lot of fun. September 20th to 22nd online and live at Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Virginia. You can learn more at englandcast. com. Slash TutorCon online. It’s going to be so much fun. Also a big thank you to the sponsor of this podcast, Armour and Castings.
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You weren’t able to be with her as she died. You were extremely close to her and then couldn’t see her for years. Then she passes away. You couldn’t even be with her. And then you’re forced to serve the person who represented the This great drama that caused all of the misery in your life. How do you think you would feel about serving that person?
How do you think you would feel about that person in general? Would you hate them? Would you want to destroy them? Or do you think the greater kindness in your heart could overcome that and you would recognize that they were just an innocent bystander in all of this? That is, of course, the situation that Mary Tudor found herself in when she was forced to serve the very young Princess Elizabeth.
She was stripped of her title of princess. She was the Lady Mary. And now she had to serve this young child who was born of what she saw as an adulterous relationship that her dad had had with Anne Boleyn. It was very uncomfortable for her. Mary Tudor was born in 1516. She was the only surviving child of Henry and Catherine of Aragon.
And she was the apple of her father’s eye. He took such pride in her. When she was young, he loved to kind of show off her talents. Even though she wasn’t a boy, he was still incredibly, incredibly proud of her. and just adored her. Anne then comes along Anne Boleyn, and Henry becomes obsessed with Anne.
Anne turned everything upside down. Henry’s passion for Anne led him to divorce Mary’s mother, Catherine. This broke Mary’s heart, of course. By the time Elizabeth was born in 1533, Mary had been declared illegitimate, and her relationship with her father was in shambles. Elizabeth’s birth wasn’t exactly celebrated either.
Her parents, of course, had expected a boy. Her father had been excommunicated, left the church, started a whole new church. All of that because of the hope of a boy. And then comes along Elizabeth. Henry acknowledged Elizabeth, though, as his legitimate heir, a position that Mary had been in her whole life.
So this, of course, further pushed Mary to the sidelines. Imagine this scene. Elizabeth is just a baby. She’s sent off to Hatfield. Mary is now forced to recognize her as a sister. And Mary refused to even look at her at first. It was a very rough start. Mary’s resentment grew. Mary was a late teenager by that point.
I mean, I think we can all remember our own lives as teenagers. It’s a hard time anyway. And then you imagine this extra stress that has been put into it, possibly contributed to all of the health issues that Mary was having. This is when she started to have lots of problems, like with her cycles. And this would lead to phantom pregnancies later on.
And a lot of it might have come out of the stress. That she was experiencing when she was living there with Elizabeth, forced to acknowledge Elizabeth as the heir, a role that she herself had had. Her resentment grew as she watched Elizabeth being treated as a princess. It wasn’t just the titles and the status though, it was personal.
Mary adored her mother, Catherine of Aragon, who had been cast aside. And during this time when she was serving Elizabeth, she wasn’t allowed to even see her mother. Elizabeth’s very existence was a constant reminder of her mother’s suffering and her father’s betrayal. The tension between them was more than, I don’t know, just like sibling rivalry.
It was rooted in their parents tumultuous relationship. Mary had been raised to believe in the sanctity of her parents marriage and the legitimacy of her own birthright, and she saw Elizabeth as a symbol of everything that she had lost. Mary’s early life had been marked by privilege and adoration. She was the rightful heir to the throne, and then her entire life just turns a complete 180 because of her father’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn.
The break with the Catholic Church, the marriage to Anne. This not only displaced Catherine, it delegitimized Mary in the eyes of the court and the country. Mary went from being a beloved princess to being labeled a bastard. A devastating blow that would shape her character and her future interactions with her half sister, Elizabeth.
But then, things took a surprising turn in 1536. First Catherine of Aragon died that year, so Mary, while it was tragic, and she was very sad that she wasn’t able to be with her mother anymore, she lost any kind of hope that she might have had, that her parents could have gotten back together, or that she would be reunited with her mother, and that it was simply Anne who was keeping her from being reunited.
Now her mother was gone, there wasn’t as much reason to hold a grudge, and then Anne is executed. So Elizabeth is not even three years old. She then loses her mother and her status. She was declared illegitimate, just like Mary, and this tragedy would bring the sisters closer together. Mary perhaps saw a bit of her own pain in Elizabeth and really started to bond with her.
Mary even wrote to their father praising Elizabeth as a promising child. They spent more time together, they shared gifts, and they seemed to find some common ground. Also, Elizabeth brought out Mary’s maternal side. It’s one of the kind of very sad tragedies in Mary’s life that she never had children because she always wanted to be a mother.
And now here she was, a young woman. She was 20 years old by this point, so she was the age to have children. And she was in this position where she could care for this now declared bastard, Elizabeth. And it really helped to bring out this kind of caring, gentle side in her that maybe she hadn’t had a chance to really explore before.
So Mary and Elizabeth’s bond actually really grew. This was a rare moment of familial harmony in the Tudor court. Mary took on this very protective role towards Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was navigating the treacherous waters of the Tudor court herself as a very young child. Throughout all of the various marriages to Jane Seymour, and then Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Howard, Mary and Elizabeth stuck with each other and Mary in a way was almost the primary caregiver for Elizabeth.
And then their father remarried Catherine Parr. This was the final marriage that brought the most stability to their life. Obviously, this was right after Catherine Howard, which was its own destabilizing time. Anne of Cleves had been destabilizing, but this marriage to Catherine Parr was really solid and Catherine was a unifying figure to them.
She encouraged the sisters to spend time together. Elizabeth, by this point, was 10, and Mary was in her mid twenties. They went together on holiday, they went on a progress in Surrey and Kent, and they actually really appeared to everybody as a very happy family unit. It was a fleeting glimpse of normalcy in their otherwise very chaotic lives.
Catherine Parr was known for her intelligence and her compassion. And she really worked hard to reconcile the fractured family with empathy, and she promoted education and religious reform. She was very intelligent, which is something that Mary was very interested in speaking with her. Even though they didn’t share the same religious beliefs, Mary had been raised in a very humanist kind of education.
And so she and Catherine enjoyed having these kind of long talks about religion. They were closer in age, so they had shared interests, and they had the same types of education. So Mary really enjoyed having Catherine as her stepmother. And for Elizabeth, it was this really stabilizing mother figure that she really needed at that time.
Catherine promoted education for both girls. She helped to make sure that Elizabeth got the same type of education as her brother Edward. And she fostered a more harmonious family environment. Mary began to see Elizabeth less as a rival and more as a companion. Also, during this time, of course, Edward was there, their brother, and he was the heir.
So the two girls didn’t have to kind of fight about who was the heir and who had been disinherited, because neither of them were the heir. They were both declared bastards at that point. Despite their different mothers and despite the tumultuous political landscape, the sisters really managed to forge a deeper bond.
But of course, the Tudor family was never stable for very long. When Henry died in 1547, Their nine year old half brother, Edward, took the throne. Edward’s reign changed everything. Mary set up her own household, and Elizabeth moved in with Catherine Parr. Mary embraced her Catholic faith much more deeply, in part thanks to the kind of radical Protestant reforms of Edward.
Of course, if we think about it, Henry never really became a Protestant. And even towards the end of his life, he was going back much more towards the, the old traditions, the old Catholic traditions. And so then when Edward comes along, and he is a much stronger Protestant, and he is destroying all of these signs of Catholicism throughout England, the stripping of the altars, where they destroyed all of the artwork, they destroyed the choir books, anything that even hinted at, at papacy, They destroyed, this would have made Mary feel very, very defensive in her faith and she clung to her faith much more strongly than she ever had under the reign of Henry.
For Elizabeth, Elizabeth had moved in with Catherine Parr, but then of course Catherine died and Thomas Seymour made his inappropriate attentions towards Elizabeth and this threw her life into chaos again. Mary and Elizabeth did keep in touch, but their meetings became less frequent. They had less that they could share.
They had less to talk about. Also because Edward was still very young, there wasn’t the same type of court environment that there would have been under their father. So there wasn’t as much reason to come to court, and they just didn’t see each other as much. For Elizabeth, who was now in adolescence, this period was incredibly tumultuous.
She faced scrutiny and scandal, particularly after Catherine Parr’s death. Thomas Seymour’s inappropriate behavior led to Elizabeth’s removal from his household, and she had to set up her own home on her own. Mary, meanwhile, was grappling with her own challenges, trying to maintain her Catholic faith under her Protestant brother’s rule.
The sisters wrote to each other occasionally. Their letters revealed a mixture of affection and formality. Elizabeth’s education continued to be a priority. Catherine had ensured that she had access to the best tutors even after she had left their household. So after having spent all of this time with each other at court and having this very early bonded relationship, Mary and Elizabeth were starting to go their own separate ways.
So this death of Henry VIII was a significant shift in the lives of both girls. Edward’s Protestant Regency was a direct threat to Mary’s Catholic beliefs, and she found herself increasingly isolated as she clung to her faith in a court in a country that was becoming much more Protestant. Elizabeth was going through adolescence, focusing on her education, and trying to align herself with influential figures at her brother’s court.
The sisters paths diverged, but they maintained correspondence that still continued to reflect their complex relationship. Fast forward to 1553. Edward VI dies, and Mary, against the odds, becomes queen. Elizabeth, careful and calculating, congratulated her sister and joined her in London. At first, Mary welcomed Elizabeth warmly, but it didn’t take very long for the cracks to appear.
Elizabeth was a Protestant, of course, and was the opposite of Mary’s fervent Catholicism. Mary’s advisors didn’t trust Elizabeth, and soon neither did Mary. Elizabeth tried to conform to Mary’s religious changes, but suspicions ran high. The turning point came with Wyatt’s rebellion in 1554, and we talked about this when we talked about the Wyatt family.
There was a plot to remove Mary as queen and replace her with Elizabeth. Elizabeth was implicated, though there wasn’t any kind of solid evidence against her. Mary still had her arrested, and her imprisonment in the Tower was a terrifying ordeal, one that would scar their relationship forever. And, in fact, Mary had her placed in the same rooms that her mother was in before her execution.
It’s just terrible. Can you even imagine? Can you imagine the resentment you would have against Mary, knowing that of all of the places she could have put you? And, you know, Mary could say, well, it was a comfortable place. It had been, you know, where a queen was housed and kept, so surely that would be the best place to put Elizabeth.
But to be in those rooms where your mother had been before she was executed and to know that your sister put you there, that would just be horrible, wouldn’t it? I can’t even imagine. So of course that would scar their relationship, and it never recovered after that. The political landscape was shifting rapidly.
Mary married Philip of Spain, and this fueled fears of the Catholic stronghold, and Elizabeth became the symbol for Protestant hope. Wyatt’s rebellion did highlight the very deep religious divide in the country, and Elizabeth’s imprisonment wasn’t just a political move, it was a personal betrayal that she would never forget.
And from Mary’s perspective, too, here she is thinking that this young girl that she had cared for, that she had raised, And, um, I’m going to go back to the, uh, the, um, the way that, uh, the way that the story was, was potentially plotting against her. From Mary’s perspective, you could look at it. First, this girl’s mother comes and destroys her family’s marriage.
And then she’s displaced because of Elizabeth. And finally, she’s queen. Finally, she’s taking her rightful place. And now this girl is still plotting against her. So, for both of them, there were very, very deep divisions and misunderstandings, and they were each being used in their own ways by the, the factions at court and by the different movements.
It was just a chasm that neither one was going to be able to cross on their own. Mary’s rule was marked by her efforts to restore Catholicism. This included the persecution of Protestants, and this only deepened Elizabeth’s resolve to maintain her Protestant faith. Mary’s reign began with very high hopes, but quickly descended into controversy.
Her marriage to Philip of Spain was deeply unpopular, stoking fears of Spanish dominance, of England becoming the sort of Spanish vassal country, and a return to Catholicism and the Spanish Inquisition coming to England. Elizabeth, as a Protestant and a legitimate heir, became the focus of opposition to Mary’s rule.
Elizabeth maintained her innocence the entire time she was in the Tower, but Mary was convinced of her guilt. After two months in the Tower, Elizabeth was moved to a house arrest at Woodstock. Mary was busy with her impending marriage to Philip. She continued, though, to keep a close eye on her sister. At Woodstock, Elizabeth was allowed some freedom, but she remained under strict surveillance.
She wrote occasional letters to Mary. One was described as bold as anything. Mary, now married, thinking about getting pregnant, having a possible pregnancy, had very little time for her sister. The phantom pregnancy in 1555 was a blow to Mary’s hopes of securing a Catholic heir. Elizabeth, meanwhile, grew more confident in herself, knowing that her position as the next in line was becoming more secure.
Mary was getting older. The chances of her having children were going down. And Elizabeth was thinking that perhaps if she could just bide her time, she would become the next queen. The pressure of her situation fostered a steely resilience in Elizabeth, and she spent her time at Woodstock reading, writing, and preparing herself for the possibility of ruling one day.
Elizabeth’s time under house arrest was a period of intense personal growth for her. She knew she had to be very careful, as any misstep could lead to her execution. Her ability to navigate these treacherous waters with grace and intelligence would later define her reign. She maintained a network of supporters who kept her informed and helped her plan for the future.
Mary, on the other hand, was facing her own challenges with health issues, with an unpopular marriage, and with phantom pregnancies. The pressure and disappointment only deepened her mistrust of Elizabeth, because she knew that Elizabeth was right there waiting in the wings, and that must have really kind of killed her.
As Mary’s health declined, her mistrust of Elizabeth grew. Elizabeth was her likely successor, much to Mary’s dismay. She knew that all of the things she was building, trying to get England back to being Catholic, Trying to restore the relationship, putting things back to sort of the pre 1520, 26, 1525 period, before her father became obsessed with Anne and everything changed.
She knew that all of this work she was doing was likely going to be overturned when she passed away if she didn’t have a child. When they met for the last time in 1558, it was clear that there was going to be no reconciliation. Mary’s bitterness lingered until she died. On November 17, 1558, she did die and Elizabeth ascended to the throne.
Elizabeth paid for Mary’s funeral, but she ignored Mary’s wish to be buried beside her mother, Catherine of Aragon. Their relationship, which had once been close, had been irreparably damaged. Elizabeth’s reign would be long and prosperous, but the shadow of her feud with Mary remained a poignant reminder of the personal and political struggles that defined their life.
Elizabeth was now queen and she faced her own challenges. She had to navigate the continued religious divide, manage her counsel, and establish her legitimacy. Yet the memory of her sister’s treatment lingered, shaping her cautious approach to governance. And in fact, she learned quite a lot from Mary. In one way, you could say that Elizabeth was as successful as she was, thanks to Elizabeth.
The lessons she learned from Mary’s reign. She tried very hard to avoid the mistakes of her sister. She was known for her relatively moderate stance on religion, for example, allowing a degree of tolerance that was absent during Mary’s reign. And then, of course, there was her very famous speech to the troops during the Spanish Armada invasion where she said, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
And this speech actually is very closely related. To the speech that Mary I gave at the Guildhall during the height of Wyatt’s Rebellion where she says, Now, loving subjects, what I am you right well know. I am your queen, to whom at my coronation I was wedded, to the realm, and to the laws of the same. Ye promised your allegiance and obedience unto me, and that I am the right and true inheritor to the crown of this realm of England.
I not only take all Christendom to witness, but also your acts of Parliament confirming the same. My father, as you all know, possessed unto the regal estate by right of inheritance, which now by the same right descended onto me. So both speeches, they say I’m a woman, but also I inherited the traits of kingship from my father.
And finally, Elizabeth never married because she saw just how unpopular Mary’s relationship with Philip was. She, of course, had her own romantic. missteps with Thomas Seymour and some others, but she remained committed to never marrying. And that was also in part because of the lessons that she learned from Mary.
So Elizabeth was really smart to be watching Mary’s rule, watching what went wrong with it and vowing to do things differently. These sisters, who were born to be enemies, had this period of a deep bond and deep closeness and really a love for each other. And then it sadly fell apart. But Elizabeth did learn from Mary.
And that’s it. Mary is part of the reason that Elizabeth was so successful. And perhaps to end this on a poetic note, Elizabeth was buried in the same vault as Mary, and the Latin inscription at the base of the tomb reads, Partners in Throne and Grave. Here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters in hope of the resurrection.
So there we go, the story of two sisters who were born to dislike each other, and in some periods brought out the best in each other as well. So I hope you enjoyed that. I will end this here, but thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your listenership. I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful week wherever you are.
I just got done camping outside in 95 degree weather at Scout’s Camp. And, uh, it was a challenge. And I won’t say I enjoyed it, but I did enjoy the time with my daughter, so that was fun. So, I hope you are having fun wherever you are. And I will be back again to speak with you soon. Remember Englandcast.
com slash TudorCon online for TudorCon streaming tickets and Tudor. Armorandcastings. com to check out some amazing Tudor accessories from our sponsor, Armor and Castings. All right, my friends, I will speak with you soon. Have a great week. Bye.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop. She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.